Франкенштейн и его монстр, к сожалению, плохо вписались в мой рабочий график и нехватку свободного времени. Плюс некоторые неприятности на работе изрядно испортили мне настроение к пятнице и чтение сочинения Мэри Шелли вызывало не столько работу мысли, сколько меланхолию и желание спрятаться от всех, словно у какой-то романной героини восемнадцатого века.

Результатом отсутствие толковых мыслей и времени стало довольно бестолковое эссе. Я изначально хотела вообще-то написать об алхимической трансмутации и гомункулюсе... Но, боюсь, герой романа под конец стал меня несколько раздражать инфантильностью и уверенностью, что если сделать вид, что чего-то нет, оно как-нибудь само собой уладится. Думаю, это из=за того, что я сама регулярно так делаю и лишнее напоминание об этом не прибавило мне хорошего настроения.

Зато на форуме поделились ссылкой на выложенный онлайн манускрипт Франкенштейна с расшифровкой: shelleygodwinarchive.org/contents/frankenstein

Эссе выложу, но под море, чтобы не травмировать случайно зашедших людей. Оно банальное и написано второпях за два часа до дедлайна.

эссе здесь
The Frankenstein can be one of first texts about the ethic of the science and the scientist’s responsibility to his work and to people around him.

From the very beginning Victor came to readers as a beloved and yes, we can say it, a spoiled child. His parents doted on him. Even his future bride was presented to him as a “promised gift” (1).

His love of the alchemy also was so deep because it seems to hold clue to all mysteries of the nature like the Philosopher’s Stone, the ultimate cure for aging and for achieving immortality. (2) Instead the modern science seems to have too many questions without answers. Victor’s childish need to find the universal answer become only deeper after the death of his mother.

Even in the Ingolstadt Victor’s main study is a question: “did the principle of life proceed?” (1)
His research methods was scientific, but the core of it was pursuit of arcane knowledge.
In his feverish need to find the elixir of life, he didn’t think once about the consequences of his actions. He was living in the one moment, “seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit”. (1)
When Victor succeed in bringing an artificial life to a corpse, he was frightened. But instead of taking the responsibility for the result of his experiment, he chose to close his eyes in hope that the monster will vanish and the problem will resolve itself.

This behavior was not of an adult, but of a child. The result of this ignorance was deaths of Victor’s friend, family and, in the end, his own. That was his punishment for ignoring ethical and moral rules toward his work and his creature.
Furthermore, his knowledge about human biology that in more thoughtful hands, would be able to bring many benefits to the humanity, was lost with Frankenstein in the arctic ice.

1 The Project Gutenberg EBook of Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
2 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher%27s_stone